Žarko Paspalj

Their first child, son Darko, was born in 1961, five years before Žarko was born in 1966.

Žarko Paspalj (Serbian Cyrillic: Жарко Паспаљ; born March 27, 1966) is a retired Serbian professional basketball player and sports administrator.

During the mid-1970s, when young Žarko was ten years old, his father's job requirements moved the family to Titograd.

Žarko took up basketball and soon established himself in the youth system of KK Budućnost.

He considers himself an ethnic Serb from Montenegro, which he believes is "only natural".

At the time, Budućnost was a small, unambitious side that had played its first ever top-tier season two years earlier in 1980–81, essentially serving as talent feeder for bigger Yugoslav League clubs like Partizan, Cibona, Jugoplastika, Crvena zvezda, and Bosna.

Constantly in danger of relegation, Budućnost sometimes banked on more than just its own quality for top-league survival.

There is an unconfirmed story that became a bit of local urban legend from the early 1980s when Paspalj was a junior, about Cibona coming to Titograd for a late season game which was meaningless for Zagreb side but crucial for Budućnost's hopes of remaining in the top division.

The story goes that a deal was struck between two sides to allow the home team to win, while in return Cibona management got to watch Budućnost's juniors practice and take whichever player they liked back to Zagreb.

Knowing Paspalj was by far their best young prospect and an asset that would soon be worth a lot of money, Budućnost's club management wouldn't let him train for a few days, which meant that Cibona never saw him and therefore picked another player.

Not too long after that, Paspalj entered the senior squad.

Paspalj began his career in 1982.

At 16 he moved up to Budućnost's first team where he was part of a talented generation alongside Zdravko Radulović and Luka Pavićević.

Playing under young head coach Milutin Petrović and alongside seasoned Yugoslav League players such as Nikola Antić (basketball) and the Ivanović brothers (Duško and Dragan), the talented youngster contributed greatly to Budućnost's third place league finish in the 1985–86 season and a playoff semi-final where they lost to eventual champions Zadar.

During the summer of 1986 Budućnost sold 20-year-old Paspalj to Partizan.

Eighteen-year-old Vlade Divac, another rising star, also joined the club that summer from Sloga.

Together with young Sasha Djordjevic, Željko Obradović and more established players like Milenko Savović and Goran Grbović, they won the national title in a final against Crvena zvezda.

Paspalj played well enough to earn a spot on the national team of Yugoslavia that won bronze at the EuroBasket 1987 in Athens, Greece.

The following year, in 1988, he played a leading role in the side that made it to the Olympic final against the Soviet Union, and marked himself out as a potential star with some fine performances for Yugoslavia at the 1988 McDonald's Open.

Also in 1988, Paspalj top-scored for Yugoslavia at the prestigious Acropolis Tournament in Athens, which included 26 points in one half in a tough-fought 104–103 victory against US college side Duke.

He earned an All-EuroBasket Team selection in 1989.

In the summer of 1989, Paspalj became one of the first Europeans to move to the NBA, joining the San Antonio Spurs despite going undrafted one year earlier.

He came into the league alongside two Soviets (Šarūnas Marčiulionis and Alexander Volkov) and two more fellow Yugoslavs (Dražen Petrović and Vlade Divac) as they were collectively dubbed the "green card five" by Sports Illustrated.

At the time they were the only five players in the entire NBA who didn't come up through the American collegiate system.

They were thus followed on both sides of the Atlantic with extra interest as the public was curious to see how foreigners fare in the world's best league.

Paspalj came to the Spurs courtesy of the team's assistant coach Gregg Popovich who noticed the 23-year-old small forward at a warm-up tournament in Dortmund, West Germany in early June 1989 where the Yugoslav national team had been preparing for EuroBasket 1989 later that month.

Liking Paspalj's game, Popovich established initial contact with the player through Paspalj's national squad training camp teammate Zoran Jovanović who spoke English having played college ball at Louisiana State.

When approached by Popovich about coming to the Spurs, Paspalj immediately expressed interest despite openly admitting to never actually believing anything would come of it as the notion of playing basketball in the NBA seemed vague and far fetched to him.

Immediately following the EuroBasket championship—where Yugoslavia won gold in dominating fashion with Paspalj making the All-Tournament Team by contributing 13.4 points per game over five games, all of them blowout wins for the rampant Yugoslavs—the player was even quoted in Yugoslav press rubbishing the idea of going to the NBA while announcing intention of completing his mandatory Yugoslav People's Army (JNA) service before finishing his contract with Partizan and only then transferring abroad to either Italian or Spanish league.

Nevertheless, the Spurs acquisition was agreed within weeks with Paspalj on summer vacation in Budva and Popovich reaching out with a US$350,000 gross sum offer for a one-year contract with options to extend afterwards.

Basketball player Nebojša Bukumirović, another former NCAA player, also participated as an operational liaison in the subsequent transfer process from Partizan to San Antonio.

Still, Paspalj's transfer was not without procedural issues stemming from the fact NBA teams did not pay transfer fees for European players under contract with clubs in Europe, treating their entry into the league within the same legal framework as American collegiate players turning professional.

Paspalj was a FIBA European Selection in 1991.

For years, Paspalj was an automatic choice for Yugoslavia's senior national team, representing his country in one FIBA World Cup, two Olympics, and four EuroBaskets.

The EuroLeague Final Four MVP in 1994, his sixteen and a half seasons career was mostly spent in Yugoslavia and Greece, along with several short stints in the NBA, France, and Italy.

Since 2009, he has been vice-president of the Serbian Olympic Committee.

He was named to the 101 Greats of European Basketball in 2018.

He was inducted into the Greek Basket League Hall of Fame in 2022.

Paspalj's forester father Jovan's lumber trade job took him from his home village on the slopes of Kozara in Bosanska Krajina to Pljevlja, finding employment at the Velimir Jakić Lumber Processing Plant (ŠIK Velimir Jakić).

Once there he married a local woman, Mileva, and remained.